Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning

by Timothy Snyder

Antisemitism cannot fully explain the behavior of the members of the Einsatzgruppen. The Einsatzgruppen sent into Austria and Czechoslovakia in 1938 did not kill Jews. The Einsatzgruppen sent into Poland in 1939 killed far more Poles than Jews. Even the Einsatzgruppen sent into the USSR killed others besides Jews. Throughout the occupation of the Soviet Union they murdered the disabled, Gypsies, communists, and, in some regions, Poles. There were for that matter no Germans (or collaborators) whose only task was to shoot Jews; everyone who was expected to shoot Jews was also expected to shoot others, and did so. Among the thousands of members of the Einsatzgruppen and the tens of thousands of Germans who shot Jews there is no known perpetrator who agreed to kill Jews but refused to kill Gypsies or Belarusian civilians or Soviet prisoners of war. Nor were there perpetrators who agreed to kill Belarusian civilians or Soviet prisoners of war or Gypsies but not Jews. The people who killed people, killed people.